Comments on: Dude, what happened to my PC?

Internet attorney Eric J. Sinrod explains why the law is unforgiving when a computer with discoverable data in a case goes "missing."

[thenet411]

So the moral is...

destroy all records before you are sued?

[Get_Bent]

Better yet...

Don't keep any records at all! You can't produce evidence for the courts if there wasn't any evidence to begin with. Of course, this makes it a little harder to run your business....

[EuroMarkus]

No Deleting

Besides actually getting rid of hardware, you also don't want to do DoD-grade wipes of your drives, if a lawsuit is on the horizon.

This is akin to finding bleach at a crimescene.

Markus Diersbock
SwingNote

[Basticar]

Please clarify

It seems to me that providing your own personal PC to the court amounts to the exact same thing as being required to testify against yourself . . . which is unconstitutional, right?

. . . so how is it the courts get away with demanding this now days?

[alegr]

Civil vs criminal

This was civil lawsuit. In civil lawsuit the burden of proof is not fully of one side.

[Get_Bent]

Did he use a shovel to fling this load of bull?

"The defendant founder of the competing company, within days of receiving the plaintiff's complaint, disposed of his computer. He did so by taking the device 20 miles away to a construction site to get rid of it in a dumpster.

Doesn't look good, does it? The defendant founder argued that his conduct was proper because he had been told that his computer had crashed and that it was beyond repair."

Yeah, right. Whenever my computer crashes, I drive 20 miles, tie a cinderblock to it, and toss it in a river.

There was enough b-s in his "reason" to fertilize at least an acre....

[Dr_b_]

Here's what he should have said and done

Your Honor, my computer was old, and I wanted to get an upgrade. I had no further use for my old system, and being concerned with the environmental damage PC components could have when dumped in a landfill, I took it to a recycling center. Before I ecologically disposed of my old system, I made a backup on this portable drive. (of course, he didn't want a new computer, there was nothing wrong with his old one, he wanted to dispose of evidence, and the portable drive does not have the critical files thereon which are germain to the case)

[Milly Staples]

Still not good enough...

... when served with an action, the defendant company is required to "quarantine" all relevant information using a "litigation hold" - actually, a secure server to which only the defendent and plaintiff attorney's have access. The hold includes all "records" relevant to the case including personal correspondence (after all, there is no expectation of privacy on a work computer since everything belongs to the employer.)

[Mproject]

Microsoft is doomed

This is the end of Microsoft